


Something Real

by osaki_nana_707



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Gen, Not Beta Read, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Spoilers for Season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22274671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osaki_nana_707/pseuds/osaki_nana_707
Summary: Post Season 4.Elliot is awake. It's... not great.
Relationships: Darlene Alderson & Elliot Alderson, Elliot Alderson & Krista Gordon, Elliot Alderson & Mr. Robot, Elliot Alderson & The Mastermind, mentions of Elliot Alderson/Angela Moss
Comments: 6
Kudos: 73





	Something Real

**Author's Note:**

> A self-indulgent character piece because i needed to get my feelings out after binging season 4 over the holidays. (Also no one i know watches the show really so i can't talk to anyone because spoilers).

The sound of the clock tick-tocking on the wall of Krista’s office is deafening.

Elliot Alderson sit on the edge of her sofa, feet together, eyes downcast and mouth silent. They’ve been sitting in this excruciatingly loud silence for what feels like eons, but she waits in it, patient.

He doesn’t know her.

Well, he does but… not really.

Elliot himself has never spoken with her. The memories he has of her are there, but he sees them like scenes in a movie or television show, a moment in time that happened to someone else. He supposes that’s not that far off the mark.

He knows about the others.

He didn’t, at least not all of them, but he does now. They haven’t made any appearances since he woke up in the hospital a few weeks ago, but they left behind their baggage and their mess. Being the real one carries the curse of muscle memory, of the aches of his past seeping in. Every moment of time lost continues its descent on his brain. 

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

It’s giving him a migraine.

“How are you feeling?” Krista asks, and she doesn’t see it, does she? She thinks this is the same person she’s had sessions with over months and months, the boy she’s developed affection and empathy for, the boy that survived the nightmare of Fernando Vera with her and helped her walk out on the other side of it.

He doesn’t want to disappoint her, but he doesn’t know what to say.

Because he’s not the same person she’s dealt with these months, he actually tells her so. “I’m… not sure,” he says. “I don’t know if I’m really feeling anything at all.”

She soaks in his words, sitting back in her chair in the gentle way she does when she’s studying him. The gesture provides a weird sort of comfort, like a stranger offering a smile on the subway when you’re hopelessly lost.

“That’s not uncommon,” she says, her voice hanging delicately in the air, wrapping around him, cradling him. “After what you’ve been through, it can be hard to connect to the emotion of it. It can be… scary.”

He almost snorts, almost laughs. She has no idea.

...then he remembers Vera and thinks maybe she has at least some idea. It wouldn’t make sense for her to have the whole picture when he hasn’t provided all of the pieces to the puzzle.

She must at least catch the corners of his mouth twitching, though he’s not sure his expression is a smile or a grimace. He’s not really sure about anything anymore.

“Talk to me, Elliot.” It’s so affectionate that it doesn’t even sound like a demand.

“I want to,” he tells her honestly, “but I just don’t… have words. Right now. I don’t even think I could begin to explain it.”

He doesn’t realize until then that his fists are gripped so tightly on his knees that his knuckles are white. His fingernails would be digging into his palms if he hadn’t chewed them to the quick. He didn’t used to chew his nails. Or did he? He’s not sure if the others did. Maybe everything isn’t as clear as he thought… or, more likely, he’s letting that fog settle in because he doesn’t want to see it.

His headache pulses harder. It makes his eyes sting.

“I’m… sorry,” he tells her. “Today’s not a good day.”

Her head tilts, and as soft as a lullaby she asks, “In what way?”

He wants to shout at her that his body is wrong, that this world is wrong, that he wants to go back to sleep, but Elliot doesn’t have the capacity for those sorts of outbursts, not like the one who sat here before. Since he woke up in the hospital, Elliot Alderson is pretty much… normal. Average.

Nothing.

No one.

His alters are silent and hidden, an audience he’s not certain he still has, and it should bring him relief, but it doesn’t.

“I-- I don’t know,” he finally manages. “I know that’s not a good answer… but I just… Everything is finished. The world is changed, and I feel like I was absent for all of it. Everyone keeps talking about how it’s better, but it’s-- it’s not. Maybe for them, but I don’t see it.”

Krista’s face fills with sympathy, and she gives him opportunity to say more. It’s an opportunity he doesn’t take. He thinks of how much better he was at talking before. He thinks that’s what happens when you lose everything.

“I’m gonna… go home,” he tells her. “I don’t think I can be very productive today.”

“That’s okay, Elliot,” she says. “Not every day has to be productive… and the world, it doesn’t have to be perfect. I understand your desire. When there’s nothing left to focus on, sometimes that just leaves what is, and not all of those things are pleasant.”

He sniffs. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

“This space is safe for you to talk about it. The good and the bad. The indescribable. I want to help you work through it. Please don’t go yet.”

He hasn’t even moved to get up. He wonders how many times the other one had stormed out on a session. Deep down, he knows the answer, but he doesn’t want to push too hard on those memories. There are reasons why he has let the others hold onto them.

“I’m... alone,” he says, and his voice cracks right down the middle of the word. “Everyone is... gone.”

Krista is silent for a moment, pressing her lips together before she asks, “What about Mr. Robot?”

“Gone. They’re all gone. It’s just… me.”

She breathes out slowly. “...They?”

He lifts his gaze from the floor to her eyes. She stares back at him. Her expression shifts subtly. He thinks she sees it now.

He is not the Elliot Alderson she knew before.

“Do you… want to tell me about them?” she asks, only a little breathless. She’s quite good at holding her composure. He supposes after being the victim of a hostage situation, this isn’t that bad.

“I don’t really know them,” Elliot says. “You know them better than I do. They don’t talk to me… just… to each other. I guess.”

“So, you’re…”

He offers her a flimsy smile, all while he feels the tears rolling down his face. “Elliot. The real one. Nice to meet you.”

\--

He gets home a little after six. The sun is setting, sending orange-gold light across his apartment floor. It’s an apartment he knows but he doesn’t. The layout is the same, but the one who had lived here before had furnished it sparsely and didn’t seem too interested in cleaning. Right now the old, stained couch is covered in blankets from where Darlene has been sleeping, but she’s not currently here. He checks his phone and finds a missed text from her. Apparently she’s out getting Thai food for them.

He sighs, tosses the phone on the desk and goes to take a shower. He wants to scrub off the day. 

Slowly he strips out of his clothes, letting them flop carelessly to the floor. They’re his clothes in that they fit him and they hang in his closet, but they’re not _his_. The other one hadn’t really been keen on buying new stuff for this body, and Elliot hasn’t had the opportunity to go out and buy new things since he woke up.

Well… that’s not true. He’s had opportunities, but…

All he wants to do is sleep.

The water in the shower isn’t that hot even when it’s turned all the way up, so he doesn’t last in it for long. His routine for it feels wrong. He should’ve showered this morning, but he woke up late so he didn’t have time. It wasn’t like it mattered. He didn’t really have anywhere to go except to see Krista. Darlene hangs around, and it’s not that she’s unwelcome, but it feels like a stranger sitting across from him. Everything he once knew about her has changed. They’ve both changed after everything that happened.

He doesn’t want to think about that. He wants to go to sleep. If he sleeps he can go back to the place where everything is fine.

He can go back to the place where Angela is alive, and his father and mother never hurt him. A place where he’s successful, and happy, and…

The Mastermind is sitting on the sofa when he comes out of the bathroom.

“Hello,” he says.

Elliot pauses in the doorway. It sort of feels like the last time they came face to face, except this time Elliot’s the one invading the apartment. 

“Why are you here?”

“We need to talk,” says the Mastermind. His gaze darts away, refusing to hold eye contact for long.

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” says Elliot,making deliberate strides across the floor to get a fresh pair of clothes.

“I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

Elliot freezes, t-shirt in hand. The words settle over him, but he won’t turn around. 

“So, you’re saying the reason you all disappeared is because I don’t want you here? Is that it?”

Elliot can’t see the Mastermind from behind him, but he knows he shrugs. He just does.

“Did you want us here?” he asks.

“No, of course not. Only lunatics stand around talking to themselves.”

He doesn’t apologize this time. Now that he knows the kind of person the Mastermind is, he doesn’t really see any reason to be sorry.

He turns and looks at the Mastermind, still sitting on the sofa, large eyes watching him only until they’re watched back. He doesn’t look like much really. The black hoodie, the self-cut hair, the dark circles under his eyes. He’s angry. He’s alone. It doesn’t seem possible that this is who has been controlling his life for the past year.

The Mastermind lights a cigarette. Elliot can feel the burn of it in his lungs. It feels good in the way only something harmful can. The delight in the press against the darkness of the universe, threatening it to come and take you.

“I gave you back control. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” asks the Mastermind, very carefully continuing to not look at him. 

...and because Elliot is not like him, not cryptic and avoidant, he says honestly, “No.”

The Mastermind finally meets his eyes. His expression is neutral, like he’d expected this answer. He should have expected it, really, considering they share the same brain, so maybe he did.

“So what do you want?” asks the Mastermind, his voice small.

“I want my life back,” says Elliot, his voice smaller.

“I already gave it--”

“Not _this_ !” Elliot shouts, and the gravel in his voice feels even better than the burn of the cigarette. He’s pushing that much harder against the darkness, and it feels _good_.

The Mastermind stalls by tapping ash into the old coffee cup on the table. “That place you were in. It wasn’t real. I created it for you.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

The silence stretches out between them, wide and expansive and cold. It slowly seeps into Elliot’s skin, but he just stands in it in a towel and nothing else. He kind of wishes it would make him go numb. All of his anger is sitting on the sofa, burning hot. He can’t get close.

“You want to go back to the fantasy,” the Mastermind says.

“I was happy there,” Elliot says, and his voice cracks in the middle, just like it did at Krista’s. His whole body sags with it. With all of his rage planted in the man sitting on the couch, all he has left is his sadness. “Why would you bring me back here?”

“I made it better for you,” the Mastermind says faintly, his eyes wide. He genuinely doesn’t understand. Elliot doesn’t know how he _can’t_.

“Better? _Better_?!”

The silence this time doesn’t stretch or freeze. It just sits between them, crackling with electricity.

“I’m an unemployed shut-in, and all my friends are fucking dead, and this is better?!”

The Mastermind says nothing.

“Okay, if that’s not enough to convince you, how about what Dad did, huh? How about that?!”

The Mastermind, again, says nothing. He just takes another long draw on the cigarette.

Elliot stands there hapless, helpless, hopeless. After a few minutes, he decides to get dressed, just to give his shaking hands something to do.

“I was just trying to keep you safe down there,” the Mastermind eventually says, “and I get it. It was nice. It was designed that way… but it wasn’t real. It was the same stupid day over and over again.”

“You could make more days for me,” Elliot says.

“It wouldn’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Because you know it’s not real.”

“I don’t care if it’s not real.”

“It doesn’t matter. The fact that you know it means it’ll fall apart,” the Mastermind explains. “I know it doesn’t feel good right now, but it’s better this way.” 

“You did all of this,” Elliot says, pulling on his jeans with purpose. “This is _your fault_.”

He makes three steps across the floor but is stopped by a hand on his chest before he can raise his fists or his voice.

“Kiddo, you need to calm down,” says Mr. Robot. Elliot stares at him, a sick feeling in his gut as he tries to reconcile the image of the man as his friend with the face of his father now that he remembers what happened. Mr. Robot’s eyes are sad, guilty. Even though he’s innocent of that particular blame, he still carries it.

“I think I’m pretty fucking calm,” Elliot says, and he is. His gaze is steady, even if his voice shakes.

“Running away and hiding from it, that’s not gonna make it better,” Mr. Robot says, squeezing his shoulder. “It’s always gonna come back… and the longer it sits, the longer it rots, the worse it’s gonna be.”

Elliot knows this, deep down. The logic wouldn’t have presented itself if he didn’t. These alters, after all, were made by him. They may be able to think and feel independently of one another, but it’s all him in the end. It’s his heart and his brain… and his fault.

Everything is his fault.

A tear snakes its way down his cheek.

“What do I do?” he asks, voice watery. “What’s the point of living like this? With… with this pain? How can I go back?”

“You can’t,” the Mastermind says, drawing both of their attention. He’s looking straight at Elliot. His gaze doesn’t falter. “You can’t go back… but you can go forward.”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Elliot says. His tears are getting stuck in his lashes. Again he wishes for the numbness, but numbness doesn’t come. The nerves are stinging and raw. The fear and the loneliness and the guilt settle in.

“We can’t do it for you,” the Mastermind says. “We tried. You can’t be healed until all of you is.”

“Why should I bother? What’s waiting for me?”

“You aren’t gonna know that until you get there, kiddo,” says Mr. Robot, letting his hand drop from Elliot’s shoulder and take shelter in his pocket, “and if you don’t bother to make the trip, then everything we’ve done up to this point will have been wasted.”

Elliot’s face crumples. His chin falls to his chest as he cries. He feels so small and young, like so many nights in his bedroom, listening for the creeping footsteps on the stairs. So many nights when he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, when he hoped that maybe eventually he would just sleep through it. It had seemed like the only solution when his nightmares happened while he was awake.

He takes a few deep shuddering breaths. He has to get himself back under control. There’s no point in standing here, boo-hooing in his apartment alone. Darlene will be back soon, and he’s not particularly keen on explaining himself… but it’s like the harder he tries to stop it, the worse it is. 

He doesn’t think he’s cried like this… _ever_ . Deep, hiccupping _sobs_ that rattle his entire frame. He thinks wildly that he might just break apart entirely.

The next thing he knows, he’s sitting on the floor.

He doesn’t remember going there, just that he is there now, and he thinks immediately _someone took over_. He doesn’t know who, but he thinks he has an idea.

For one thing, the Mastermind is no longer in the room.

For another, the coffee table has been flipped over and there’s a new hole in the wall.

He looks down at his hand, finding his knuckles bloodied and bruising.

Mr. Robot looks slightly exasperated, but in the way a parent looks when their child is throwing a tantrum.

“Are you done?” Mr. Robot asks.

Elliot slowly drags his knees to his chest and says, “I didn’t do that.”

“Yeah, I know, but he can still hear me.”

Mr. Robot sighs, longsuffering, then sits down next to him on the floor. He takes Elliot’s injured hand and presses his thumbs against it, making sure there are no broken bones. “Anyway, there goes the deposit on this apartment, huh?”

“I think that was gone a long time ago,” Elliot says and somehow, somehow, manages a watery laugh. Mr. Robot laughs too, shaking his head.

“He’s angry. He feels it too, what you’re feeling. We all do.”

Elliot sniffs. “I don’t want to feel this way. It fucking sucks.”

“I know it does, kiddo. If I could protect you from it, I would. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do… but hiding in a fantasy world, walking that infinity loop until eternity, it’s not helping you. The pain you’re feeling is good, I think. Pain means you’re alive. Considering all the shit we’ve been through this last year, that’s the kind of thing that makes you start believing in miracles.”

“You gonna tell me everything happens for a reason?”

“Fuck no. There’s reason for some things... but not everything.”

Elliot stares at their hands, Mr. Robot’s thumb sliding over each finger. Not broken.

He’s not broken.

Not yet.

“I wish I could take the hits life has thrown at you,” Mr. Robot says, “but I can’t. If you never meet it, you can’t get past it. I didn’t see it before. I thought I could keep you safe by allowing you to forget, but…”

“You couldn’t. Because I didn’t forget. Not really.” Elliot exhales and lets his hands drop into his lap. “I think I’m… okay. Well, as okay as I can be. I think that outburst shook me out of it.”

“Makes sense. He knows you more than any of us.”

“Yeah… my anger and me have been pretty fucking close,” Elliot says, a corner of his mouth turning up ruefully. “Like brothers. All of you have become my family.”

“Yeah, well… Sorry we’re not that great.”

“Better than the one I have.”

“That’s not completely true.”

The front door opens as if on cue and Darlene comes stomping in with a bag full of far too much food for the two of them to eat. She looks at the coffee table and then at the hole in the wall. “Well, that’s fucking nice,” she says flatly. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah,” Elliot says. He looks to his side and finds Mr. Robot is gone.

Darlene hefts the food up onto the counter by the sink then goes to turn the table upright again. He can sense her watching him out of the corner of her eye, searching for a tell that he’s not who he says he is. She’s gotten pretty good at differentiating Mr. Robot from the Mastermind, but not so much the Mastermind from Elliot.

Maybe that says a lot right there.

“It’s me, Darlene,” he says.

“That’s a loaded phrase when it comes to you,” she tries to joke. The words are fragile though, hung in the air carefully. She’s afraid-- not of him, but of breaking him. She still hasn’t fully figured out how to handle him. He thinks that’s fair. He hasn’t fully figured out how to handle himself either.

Eventually, she finds what she’s looking for in his face. Satisfied, she goes into the bathroom and comes back out with the first aid, taking his hand in hers. Her fingers are long, slender, and delicate, but their grip is as strong and warm as Mr. Robot’s. “So, are you gonna tell me what all of that was about?”

“Oh, you know, just your typical, run-of-the-mill mental breakdown.”

Darlene cleans the knuckles with the detached precision of someone who’s done it one too many times, but her expression is less guarded. “Aren’t you, like, a constant mental breakdown?”

Elliot just shrugs, looking up at the ceiling while she bandages the hand. “I think we can both agree that I’ve been a lot worse.”

“Yeah, well. I think after all the shit you put up with, you earned a little batshit crazy… but if you think I’m gonna go all HGTV on that hole in the wall, you’re on your fucking own.”

“We’ll just frame it,” says Elliot. “Make it into art.”

“Since when are you an artist?”

“Maybe this is my start.”

A corner of Darlene’s mouth turns up. “Oh, yeah, I can like, totally see you standing there at the Met or something.” 

“The Louvre.”

“Ooh, France. Now we’re talkin’. I’ll just be your manager then. We can split the profits.”

She lets her head fall back, knocking gently against Elliot’s. She’s finished bandaging the hand, but she hasn’t let go of it. “That’s a nightmare, right? Me being a manager? I can’t even manage my own life, much less yours.”

She falls silent.

Elliot turns his hand over so that he’s holding hers, leaning his head into her hair. “I think you’re doing alright, all things considered.”

“Yeah, we really put the fun in dysfunctional.” The sarcasm doesn’t have the bite in it that it normally does.

The warmth of her hand settles in his own, and he feels a sudden, overwhelming influx of emotion towards her. Darlene is here. 

Darlene, his sister.

Darlene, the only one who’d ever known the darkness of their home.

Darlene, who had come back for him.

Darlene is _here_.

He thinks briefly of the feeling of emptiness he’d felt down in that perfect life, that mobius strip of the same beautiful day. Something had always felt like it was floating there, right on the tip of his tongue, something _missing_. He’d tried to find a way to fill that hole, but there was nothing and no one that could feed the loneliness. It was like a lost limb, numb but flickering with phantom pains.

His right hand, he thinks.

Partner in crime. Literally.

He turns his gaze to the wall, and the Mastermind is standing there, hands in the pockets of his hoodie. He says, “Do you get it?”

Elliot does.

This world, the real one, isn’t perfect, but it is whole. The past is dreary and terrifying, and the present is clothed in uncertainty… but there is a little comfort in that uncertainty after all, isn’t there? The perfect sameness of the life in his mind had itched and itched and _itched_. He’d tried to scratch at it, but nothing satisfied it, and he would wake up and start over again the next day. Rewind the video tape.

Now, it doesn’t have to end there, at the almost-happily-ever-after. Endless possibilities stretch out before him. An uncertain future is still a future, and this is his life for the taking. There’s peace in letting go of that tight control, of just letting the world exist around him. It feels like a long exhale. The end of a long day. The beginning of a new one.

“So…” Darlene says when the silence has stretched on long enough. “Like… are you okay?”

He says, “Yeah. I am.”

And he means it.

Darlene is here, and he is here, and it’s okay. 

She is not the same person, but he knows her. He is not the same person, but he knows himself too.

Today’s not a good day, but maybe tomorrow will be better. 

There is a tomorrow waiting this time.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](http://some-radical-notion.tumblr.com). come scream about mr. robot with me.


End file.
